Animal Behavior

There are some Californians so naive about earthquakes that they believe unusual animal behavior will warn them of an imminent quake and that they can somehow escape "the big one," a researcher said. A UCLA study of 3,500 adults from throughout the state showed that some people are unable to conceptualize the danger of a devastating temblor and overestimate the ability of government to provide for victims in a quake's aftermath.

University of California scientists have wired a forest in the San Jacinto Mountains with high-tech gadgets for a close-up study of nature. About two dozen remotely operated cameras -- including one slung from cables and operable via Internet connection -- zoom in on feeding sparrows, nesting bluebirds, grazing deer and other wildlife at the James Reserve near Idyllwild. The equipment enables scientists to study previously unobserved phenomena, such as animal behavior during weather changes.

Beach party equipment list: Sunscreen. Picnic lunch. Beach umbrella. Plastic bucket and shovel for the children. Snakebite kit. Snakebite kit? Believe it . Live snakes have begun washing up on two of San Diego County's most popular beaches at Del Mar and Solana Beach. The dazed serpents, plus assorted lizards and frogs, were apparently swept away from their brushy inland homes by the San Dieguito River, which empties into the sea between the two coastal cities north of San Diego.

A long night scouring a deep, dark ocean is proving uneventful -- until the luminous red dots begin drifting across the sonar screen. Banter in the wheelhouse suddenly stops and grubby fingers point to the dots clustered along the bottom, as if trying to locate the enemy. On deck, a fisherman lurches forward as his rod dips seaward. Another fisherman is jerked against the rail, then another. "What else can it be?" says Capt.

The invasion force began landing a few days ago, wave after wave of red pelagic crabs carried by warm currents from Baja and dumped unceremoniously on the beaches of Southern California. A human tendency is to view such mass stranding--or other bizarre animal behavior--as a harbinger of rough weather or even a cataclysmic event.

Re "A Dog's Gotta Do What a Dog's Gotta Do," Commentary, Aug. 20: Mark Derr eloquently illustrates the extent to which people are bringing dogs into their homes while failing to provide the attention necessary to give them a fair chance at coexisting peacefully with their family, friends and neighbors. A large percentage of dogs and cats are surrendered to animal shelters by such families, which give up when they are faced with unexpected yet common animal behavior and care issues. Animal advocacy and rescue organizations should reevaluate their Sisyphean focus upon trying to save from euthanasia every unwanted and abandoned pet forced upon animal shelters.

In January, 1975, Chinese fieldworkers and woodcutters near Haicheng, a city northeast of Beijing, were startled when hundreds of snakes suddenly appeared from their hibernation holes and quickly froze to death in the snow. At the same time nearby farmers reported strange behavior from livestock. Cows and horses refused to enter barns and repeatedly attempted to break out of their corrals. Chickens ran around in a frenzy and hens did not lay eggs for a week.

A bike rider was attacked by a mountain lion as she rode through a popular Orange County wilderness park Thursday, and the body of a man, who may have been killed by the same animal, was found nearby. If confirmed, the death would be the first killing of a human by a mountain lion in California since 1994. Hours later, sheriff's deputies shot to death a mountain lion spotted near where the man's body had been found.

In the long and seemingly futile quest to build a better roach trap, researchers have finally identified the come-hither chemical of the female German cockroach and produced a synthetic version that makes males come running in less than nine seconds. The search for the sex pheromone has been a top priority for cockroach scientists, but it has been an arduous process because the compound is emitted in very small quantities and is so fragile that it easily degrades during laboratory analysis.